Every corner of Zimbabwe

Once the royal hunting ground of the Ndebele warrior-king Mzilikazi in the 19th century, Hwange was proclaimed a Game Reserve in 1928 by Ted Davison, who became its first warden. Promoted to National Park in 1961, it has no natural surface water in the dry season — an extensive network of pumped boreholes (today solar-powered) sustains the wildlife on what is otherwise Kalahari sand.

Built by ancestral Shona between roughly 1100 and 1450 AD, Great Zimbabwe was the capital of a powerful trading kingdom that exported gold and ivory as far as China and Persia — Ming dynasty porcelain and Arabian glass have been excavated on site. Its dry-stone walls, raised without mortar, gave the modern nation its name ('dzimba dza mabwe' — houses of stone). UNESCO listed it in 1986; the eight soapstone Zimbabwe Birds discovered here are the country's national emblem.

The Matobo Hills have been continuously inhabited for over 500,000 years and hold one of the world's richest concentrations of San rock art — over 3,000 sites painted across 13,000+ years. Sacred to the Mwari religion and burial place of King Mzilikazi (1868) and Cecil John Rhodes (1902) at his chosen 'View of the World', the area was declared a National Park in 1926 and a UNESCO Cultural Landscape in 2003.

'Mana' means 'four' in Shona — for the four large pools left behind when the Zambezi shifted course thousands of years ago. Established as a National Park in 1975 and inscribed by UNESCO in 1984, Mana is one of very few African parks where visitors are permitted to walk and canoe unaccompanied. Made world-famous by the BBC's 'Dynasties' which followed wild dog 'Tait' and her family, and by photographer Nick Brandt's iconic 'Boswell' — the bull elephant who stands on his hind legs.

The Kariba Dam was built between 1955 and 1959 across the Zambezi's Kariba Gorge — at the time the largest dam ever attempted. Some 57,000 BaTonga people were displaced from their ancestral lands; in parallel, 'Operation Noah' (1958–64), led by Rupert Fothergill, rescued more than 6,000 wild animals from the rising waters. Today's lake is 226 km long, 40 km wide and one of the world's largest reservoirs by volume.

Stretching 300 km along the Mozambique border, the Highlands rise from sub-tropical lowveld to Mount Nyangani (2,592 m), Zimbabwe's highest peak. The Manyika people farmed these mountains long before Cecil Rhodes built his retreat at Nyanga in the 1890s; the area's stone-walled terraces, pit dwellings and iron-smelting furnaces date back to the 14th century. The 762 m Mutarazi Falls — the second-highest waterfall in Africa — plunges off the escarpment into Honde Valley.

'Gonarezhou' means 'Place of Many Elephants' in Shona — a name earned through centuries of co-existence between the Shangaan people and great herds. Proclaimed a National Park in 1975 and joined to South Africa's Kruger and Mozambique's Limpopo to form the 35,000 km² Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in 2002. Once heavily poached during the war years, conservation since 2007 (Frankfurt Zoological Society partnership) has seen elephants rebound to over 11,000 and the return of wild dogs and cheetah.